SECTION VII.

DUBLIN SINCE THE UNION WITH GREAT BRITAIN TO THE YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY.

ON the 1st day of January, 1801, "The Imperial United Standard was first displayed upon Bedford Tower, Dublin Castle, in consequence of the Act of Legislative Union becoming an operative Law."

Widely contrasted were the feelings with which persons recognised the flag on that memorable morning, according as they were favourable or otherwise to the new relative position which it symbolized as existing between Ireland and Great Britain.

Great as may be the aggregate benefits of the "Union" to the two countries, it was unavoidable that Dublin itself should suffer by the abolition of the Irish parliament. The measure was to the metropolis what absenteeism is to the country. According to Dr. Walsh, Dublin, before the Union, was the constant or occasional residence of 249 temporal peers, 22 spiritual peers, and 300 members of the house of commons. This unquestionably created and sus

tained for the city a large amount of business, which was the more important from the limited extent of Dublin's manufactures, mercantile transactions, and enterprise. Yet the city has not altogether sunk under the privation, as many of its inhabitants and others foreboded. Changes in the sources and modes of industry and acquisition may take place without absolute ruin to a community; and such changes must, in the progress of society, frequently occur. Dublin has survived, under the Union, for half a century; and it may be hoped that the century's end will see Ireland's metropolis far more flourishing and prosperous than when, at the century's beginning, the Union flag first floated on Bedford Tower.

The Irish parliament having ceased to exist, the stately structure built for its accommodation was no longer wanted. In the year 1783, a company had been formed by Act of Parliament and charter, called the " Bank of Ireland," and had hitherto occupied premises in Mary's Abbey. An Act was now passed in the Imperial Parliament, authorizing the sale of the edifice in College-green to the Bank of Ireland. Alterations were made in it to accommodate it to its new purpose, and others to render it more secure if not more beautiful. What had been the House of Cominons where Grattan, Plunket, Flood, Burke, Saurin, and other men of might, gave forth eloquent argument which might have honoured the Pnyx of Athens or the senatehouse of Rome, was changed into the bank

cash-office; and the House of Lords, with its tapestried walls, where nobles assembled in deliberation upon their nation's interests, and where the representative of majesty sat on the vice-regal throne, was changed into a room for holding meetings of Bank proprietors.

The month of July, in 1803, was made memorable in Dublin by an insurrection headed by Robert Emmet, a man of ability and of a reputable position in society. On the evening of the 23rd, the highly respected lord Kilwarden, chief justice of the King's Bench, returning from the courts in his carriage, was attacked by an infuriate rabble and murdered on the spot. The outbreak "resembled a riot rather than an insurrection, and was alarming only because it was unexpected; for, notwithstanding the momentary panic which it excited, in a few hours the public tranquillity was restored."

For twenty years, the peace of the city remained unbroken by any serious disturbance. In 1830, the government had to suppress the Society of Friends of Ireland, the Anti-Union Society, and the Volunteers of Ireland, as endangering the public tranquillity. During the year following, the late Daniel O'Connell, esq., M.P., and seven others, were arrested for holding political meetings, contrary to proclamation. On the 8th of October, 1843, a public meeting to be held at Clontarf, under Mr. O'Connell, for promoting the repeal of the Union, was prevented by proclamation; and on

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the 14th of the same month informations were lodged against that gentleman and his son, with two Roman Catholic clergymen, and five other leaders in the movement, for a misdemeanour. Their trial, one of the most arduous and generally exciting to the public mind of the empire, though not the most important, which has occurred in the administration of national justice, commenced on the 15th of January; on the 12th of February a verdict of " guilty was returned; and the convicted were committed to prison on the 30th of May. An appeal was carried before the House of Lords, who reversed the decision of the court below. The sensation produced upon all parties and classes in the city, when the news of this arrived, was most profound. It is said to have taken the prisoners themselves and their most sanguine friends by surprise. Throughout the city, but especially on the way to the Richmond Bridewell, where they were confined, all was intensely earnest but noiseless stir. In a day or two afterwards, they left the prison, but no riot or even lesser breach of the peace occurred.

The year 1848 was marked by more threatening movements than had appeared since the rebellion fifty years before. On the 18th of July, Dublin was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage Act; and on the 26th the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act arrived in the city. But the transportation of John Mitchell, under the Treason Felony Act, for fourteen years, the

violent proceedings of other disaffected parties, with their arrest, conviction, and condemnation for high treason, and the commutation of their sentence of death to expatriation, are things fresh in general recollection.

Of calamitous events in Dublin since the century began, several must not pass unadverted to. In the latter part of the summer of 1832, the Asiatic cholera appeared for the first time, and hurried off its thousands of victims. On the night of Sunday, January the 6th, 1839, a most terrific storm swept across the city. The evening was heavily still and warm; about ten o'clock, P.M., the wind had risen by one next morning it was raging; from three to four was at its greatest fury; and it scarcely subsided till the Tuesday following. Just at the midnight of the Sunday, the Bethesda chapel and premises were on fire. The view of the city from the rear of houses on the canal bank, between Portobello and Charlemont-street, was appallingly awful; the roar of the tempest, the trembling of those comparatively sheltered dwellings, the blaze in the distance lighting up the sky so as to render objects almost visible as at noon, the consciousness of the havoc which was being made, and, if possible, the yet far greater havoc that was threatened by the flames, awoke sensations which approached what we might suppose would be produced by foretokens of the heavens passing away with a great noise, the elements melting with fervent heat, and the earth and all things therein being burned up.